yup, still alive

yup, i'm still here, but i'm kind of consciously not putting anything into the blog. i still have a lot to say, but i'm finding the old fashion way is better ... good 'ol face to face with people you love/trust.

still wigs me out

bolero that is ....

mick mars is frightening

i heard home sweet home (thank you hair nation) on the way to work this morning. i remember when i was however old i was when that came out, it was #1 on dial mtv for like, 2 months. l and i would sit and wait for it to come on like every day. now i'm just like "this song is ok .... "

anyway, i miss v66

no, it's not a birthmark

i found this via the web archive from my old college webpage (!). it was pretty amazing ... i spent like 2 hours going through old web pages from my rpi days. it was nuts. i don't know what criteria it used to archive, because some of the pages i really wanted to see weren't there (nemesis' page, for one - "i wish you were dead")

anyway, seeing this image of my tattoo got me thinking .. do i regret having this now that i'm 29 and in the working world? the answer is a definitive no .... i still think the meaning of it is as badass now as it was when i found out. tkphi, bitches!

horse's ass

i drove by the mfa on the way to work this morning ... there were a bunch of little kids out front on a field trip. that brough back some memories. i remember running around seeing all the paul revere silver and all the colonial art. pretty cool stuff. anyway, my favorite picture is the one of washington standing in front of the horse, but it's the rear end. i think the real name is like "washington at dorchester highlands" or something, but everybody just called it the "horse's ass" painting ....

april 6, 1999

well, here it is, 7 years to the day since my dad died.  some days it doesn't seem like that long at all and some days it seems like it was an eternity.  this year it seems to bother more than any of the others i think though, not quite sure why.  it's kind of sad that i can't even really remember what his voice sounded like any more.  i do my impressions with my goofy dad voice, but that wasn't how he sounded in real life.  it's kinda weird how when the whole thing was happening i just kind of looked at it as something that was a part of life, and that i had so many other things happening that it kind of distracted me (finals, graduation, paris, first job).  it was only a few years later that i started to get sad about it.  maybe it's now that i have so many things going on (both good and bad) that i'd like to talk to him about that i really feel the loss.  i also think about how much has changed since then .... i'm going to be 29 next week ...

i do think life works in funny ways though ... i don't believe in a higher power, but sometimes timing is strange.  i found out last night that i'm going to have a nephew.  ok, so it's a "pseudo" nephew, but whatever ... i'll consider him part of my family.  i saw some ultrasound pictures, and it was really quite amazing ... hard to describe.  when you see a black and white fuzzy photo of someone who isn't even born yet and you already know you love him ... anyway, i'm getting sappy now .... time to do some work

wtf?

from the boston dirt dogs site:

Wake Gets Whacked Around in Arlington
Rangers Jump All Over Sox Early, Win 10-4
Francona Decision to Slot Tim No. 2 Backfires
Bard Baffled by Knuckleballer
Offense Taking Night Off
DiNardo Not DiAnswer
Riske Business in the Red

Must-Win for Beckett on Wednesday

must win? it's the friggin 3rd game of the season!!!

i don't know what's going on with me this year but i just can't take all the red sox yahoo-ism - and i used to be one of them. maybe because there are so many friggin poser red sox fans now ... people who pay money to join "red sox nation" but probably don't know who todd benzinger or dave henderson are, or if i said "it was a past ball, not a wild pitch" would actually know what i mean.

ok, rant over ... but i'm sure it will bubble up again. maybe when i start going to games next week i'll get excited ... but who knows. i think i've watched like a total of 6 innings this year, and about 1 2/3 of the reg season so far .... my prediction for next week is the patented diddy "7th inning and go to the beerworks" bailout

sweet picture

this is a great picture

take that crap ass music to cincinnati

well, arroyo's gone. i think he was a nice 5th/long man, but i couldn't stand all that music bs. he sucked.

that's a northeastern freshman btw ... in her DORM

little emotish....

watching the sopranos last night kind messed me up a little bit. at the end of the show last week, tony got shot in the gut. this week went back and forth between a coma dream he was having and his family by him at the hospital. he was all f'ed up and hooked up to a ventilator. unfortunately it brought back some bad memories for me. though he wasn't shot, i essentially went through the same thing with my father, and it sucked balls. i was about a month away from graduating college, and living in troy. i was able to come home on weekends but it was still not ideal. anyway, it stirred up a lot of memories. really good show though, i think edie falco just won an emmy for that one.

it's two weeks away from opening day and i really still don't care. usually i'm pretty jazzed by now. not sure what's going on.

stugots ii?

what the hell happened to the stugots?

holy crap!

hbo messed up and put the synopsis of the premiere of the sopranos on their site under a synopsis of an older episode ... so of course i read it. anyway, i know what happens. i won't spoil it, but it's good ...

leftovers ...

things from last week, today, etc .... whatever happens to come to mind

• there was a chick in the training class i taught last week that was kinda money. since we were in canada i wonder if she was only like .88 as money as she would be here. anyway ... she's a EE, was pretty easy to talk to and down to earth, good lookin' (had the old 'that chick's pretty hot, huh' conversation with one of our on-site guys .. he actually started it), likes fish better than meat .............. and she's a) a customer and b) lives in toronto. balls
• knee's good enough that i used the elliptical in the hotel last week and ran the last two days. i hit the old celebrity hot tub party after ... sweet
• going back to rpi tomorrow to give an info session, then i come back. seems like a waste of time
• curling ..... GO AWAY! it was on every night in canada. they actually watch this crap outside of the olympics. i was eating at the bar of restaurants all week, and they had curling on the tv's everywhere. then at 11 when i switched over to "sportscentre" ... pre-empted for curling
• radio ... rush, nickelback. rush, nickelback. repeat. good thing i took my fall out boy cd
• my car was a corolla. i took 4 students in my car to lunch. i apologized for them having to squeeze because of the small car. they were like "you think this is small?"
• things were dicey friday morning. i was pretty hung over. flight was in question. i dragged myself to the supermarket to get a croissant and what i thought was a bran muffin (it was banana). it did the trick. i even swang into the packie next door for get diddy a bottle of capt morgan dark
• canadian immigration ... suck my balls. what a pain in the ass to get through. i had heard the rumors, but next time i'm saying i'm there to see the cn tower ...... eh
• that's not bs ..... they really do say Eh .... ALL THE TIME
• i'm trying to decide if i should even attempt to expense my labatt induced $65 dinner bill from thursday
• all i wanted to do friday afternoon was get on my 2:00 flight and fall asleep. cancelled. put on the 4:30. so what did i do? eat.
• i ran into mr "i have a blackberry and i'm going to talk loudly on it in the gate area so everybody can see it" loser. those things are so absurd ..... phones shouldn't be that wide
• i heard texas flood on the way to work this morning. i remember the first time i heard that song. i knew pride and joy of course, but was blown away when i first heard texas flood
• went to scott and cat's bday shindig at jillians sat night. busted out the 10 pin skills. came in second ... now i have the bug again .... anyone up for 10 pin this weekend? perhaps a lanes and games outing?
• how did a song about a pimp win an oscar?

i'm glad i quit....

ok, so thank god I stopped smoking

if you can't tell .... that's eddie van halen

6 days ....

i have some toronto thoughts to post .... but i don't have a lot of time right now ... about to head to NH for the day. i'll put those up later. i guess the highlight was my first "sitting at a bar, losing track of the beers while chatting with the bartender and getting drunk on a business trip" moment

6 days to go until the sopranos .... nice......

not so golden arches

well, apparently the problem with my knee is that i strained the mcl, fortunately where it connects with the shin bone, not in the joint, so it's not horrible. 

i guess my feet are pretty damn flat so even though my running shoes are supposed to help, i still need to use arch supports (all the time apparently)

i knew i had flat feet but the dr was like, "those are pretty flat."  sweet.

off to toronto next week, eh?  now i just found out i'm going to have to teach another training class.  at least it's in boston.  i'm glad that "i won't be teaching on a regular basis."

nothing's more annoying than....

a guy sitting behind you at les miserables humming ... off key ... to the songs, and then complaining, loudly, that the actors don't say "jean valjean" with the proper french accent.

other than that, and the fact that i can barely walk because i screwed up my left knee, the show was awesome...

other than that, spending my days on the tester at harrison ave .... off to toronto next week ...

yeah you know me!

i heard opp on the way home tonight ... why the hell was steve guttenburg in that video?

what ever happened to luscious jackson? i guess they broke up, but i kind dug em. i also heard naked eye, and i always liked ladyfingers. ladyfingers was released the week i started work in june of 99. it always reminds me of that time. it was an exciting time .... minus the taurus wagon

this is my 100th post

i might be starting a project in june which would be installed in edinburgh, scotland. sweet. I'd probably be there for 2-4 weeks, and swinging london is only about an hour flight. my cousin chris is now there too ... nice. i'll be doing a gay dance number in no time


been working at harrison ave all week .... i still can't believe my whole company is leaving boston entirely

if you know what this is, enjoy ...

grammy thoughts....

am i the only one who thinks that mary j blige is really not that good? she butchered one

wtf was up with sly stone? he did his best george clinton impression. came out, sang like 3 lines, and walked off. steven tyler didn't do anything during that either. joe perry was money though, but the headwear was interesting
i love the fact that tyler always uses the crap tied to the mic. i always think of tom hanks on the snl skit

i don't get coldplay ... they suck

jay-z, linkin park, and paul mccartney .... Q-

what was madonna wearing?

i can't see kelly clarkson without hearing high pitch eric saying "i'm kelly clarkson" in my head. at least she can really sing

david bowie got a lifetime achievement award .. they mentioned it, and then moved right to "best rap album...." ummm, why didn't he perform?

why have i never heard of john legend? fob got robbed

does stevie wonder say no to anything?

fantasia is frightening

did kanye west raid kool moe dee's sunglass drawer?

saucy

that used to be one of my favorite adjectives

two fat ladies window shop?!

...something for the mantlepiece? i heard pulling mussels on the way home tonight. it's a great song, but the lyrics really are bizzarre. and i feel like william tellllll............

black coffee in bed is also money

one of the guys at work and i today were looking at our ids. mine's from 1999 and i think his is from 2000. we were both like 1) wow we looked young and 2) we both still have those shirts and in my case 3) i had more hair. he was saying how that was probably one of the best times in his life as he was making money, but we really didn't have much pressure because it was all like training. in my case, it was the begining of the "1213" days ... fresh city, trl, jp licks, DIMP, chez diddy, "those sho is some tasty cookies," the apparatus with the 311 sticker, nemesis showing up at the front door after a moby show ("i walked until i saw the fountain"), flight attendants, BART, the answering machine message(BHP)

anyway ... we had a meeting today to discuss our move to north reading. it's april 3. we have A LOT of crap to move/throw away. they want us to set aside 1-2 hours/week to clean up the common areas ("we're bringing in pizza!!!"). yeah, great .... don't talk, just pass?

from bill simmons ...

ESPN.com: Page 2 : An XL-sized diary: "6:22 -- Tonight's celebrity coin tosser: The Football Jesus himself, Tom Brady. See, you can't have a Super Bowl without Belichick and Brady. Seattle calls tails, the toss is tails and they WILL receive - Brady even owns Pittsburgh in the coin toss."

survey says!

a collection of those blog surveys:

You Are an Espresso

At your best, you are: straight shooting, ambitious, and energetic At your worst, you are: anxious and high strung You drink coffee when: anytime you're not sleeping Your caffeine addiction level: high

What Kind of Coffee Are You?

Your Personality Profile

You are elegant, withdrawn, and brilliant. Your mind is a weapon, able to solve any puzzle. You are also great at poking holes in arguments and common beliefs. For you, comfort and calm are very important. You tend to thrive on your own and shrug off most affection. You prefer to protect your emotions and stay strong.

The World's Shortest Personality Test

Your Pimp Name Is...

His Majesty Dynamite

What's Your Pimp Name?

What Your Sleeping Position Says

You are calm and rational. You are also giving and kind - a great friend. You are easy going and trusting. However, you are too sensible to fall for mind games.

What Does Your Sleeping Position Say About You?

Tommy Lee Shares Your Taste in Music

See his whole playlist here (iTunes required)

Which Musician (or Group) Shares Your Taste in Music?

booo

shit. i just got back from the dr. my gut ... still leaky. in fact it really hasn't changed at all. the doc thinks that i'm still inadvertantly eating one of the friggin like 20+ foods i'm not supposed to eat. he said even that is enough to cause problems.

i have been breathing better at least. i've figured out that corn is definitely a problem ... and that maltodextrin is made from corn ... and that corn is in like everything.

ran 3 miles today at least. no weights, since i got up and my arms were like "FOD" (for you green day fans)

i was using the tester today, and we had to get off because the vp of the semiconductor test divison was filming the "quarterly video" in the room and they needed to have less noise. i'm watching the guys setting up the cameras and stuff, and i'm wondering if they thought they were going to be the "next scorsese," and here they are shooting a bald guy standing in front of a tester. what's the shoot this afternoon, expect the best?


i'm listening to maynard ferguson playing birdland. money. he's pretty damn big now though (the hair is clutch):


i went and saw this guy at dedham high school and he didn't even play birdland. that would be like herbi hancock not playing rockit!

rememeber that period on mtv where everyone was trying to make the weirdest video? rockit was up there, and so was this:

anyway, time to go ...... somewhere else

what do we love? PAIN!

i had a different version of this post that i think i'll leave as a draft for now. i guess in summary, the word of the day is: PAIN! i finally felt well enough to go back to the gym yesterday so between the weights and the treadmill, i'm a little sore. anyway, i guess i also in general just feel like crap. have for a long time actually. i'm 2 months away from 29 and where am i going? i don't want to sound like a whiny bitch so i don't think i'm going to expound any further (hence the post still in draft), but i'm just feeling totally dissatisfied with just about all aspects of my life. sweet.

shhhhh

having the whole "bad songs" thing on my mind .... i'm going to keep track of all the questionable songs i sing at least two lines from over the short term.....

• le freak - chic
• opposites attract - paula abdul (that friggin cat)
• dirty little secret - all american rejects
• joey - concrete blonde
• don't stop believin' - journey
• sandstorm - darude (ok, i know you can't sing along, but i listened)
• mama said knock you out - ladies love cool james

-aside ... remember when he did this "unplugged," with the fuckin guy with the long hair and the acoustic
jammin out? what the hell was that shit in ll's armpits?


speaking of unplugged ... the best one:

more to come....

• summer girls - lfo
• come undone - duran duran
  

heckle free zone

2/3/06:
i'm giving this a bump since i got a comment on it. originally from 6/3/05

i've decided that everybody is allowed a list of 10 terrible songs they're allowed to like. you know, the ones you belt out in the car but would never admit to it. the list of 10 is protection in case you ever get caught, because you know the person who caught you has 10 of their own. everybody does, and that show motor mouth on vh1 proved it.

speaking of, the best guy on that show was the guy who would get out of the car and dance at traffic lights. that was awesome. he was like shaking his ass and stuff...

oh, renteria, you have large balls, but that was money

random "picture i found that i felt like posting"

ahhh the vegas '99 trip. what a blast. gotta love the "mango hut." where's chris kattan?

how do you replace a dick?

with a boehner of course

how not to get a job ...

i was at a career fair at rpi yesterday. was i this stupid when i was looking for a job? people would walk by the booth, i would look at them, say "hi, how are you?" and they would either keep looking at the ground, or say hi and keep walking. maybe 1 out of 5 stopped to talk. ??????? one guy was walking around in a lab coat and had dyed his hair green. a girl i interviewed last fall but didn't select for on site visits came up and asked "why did i fail?"

going to these career fairs is getting tedious. i'm always exhausted when i leave, have a sore throat, and spend all day trying to explain what this does (it's difficult):i must say when it got the the "it's 3:45 and it's time to barter schwag" phase, i made out pretty well this time. i got the coolest schwag i've gotten yet, some of those light up party ice cubes:


we're giving out silly putty which i thought was stupid but everybody seemed to love it.

i always can't believe that i lived in that hellhole for 4 years. the guys who went with me is also an rpi alum, and we were both like "wow this place blows."

troy pub was money as usual though.

holy crap!

i saw this on boing boing .... yup, he's 3

it's a retirement community!

i'm fired up

it's on!

oh yeah!

it's called .... last place

went to the b's/rangers game last night. pretty good game, went to a shootout, but surprise, the b's lost. i wish i had gotten a chance to see toivanen, but that's the way it goes i guess.

i think the best part of the evening was watching a "woman" with a shirt on that i think had a picture of tweety that said "bad temper" or something argue with the rent a jakes. i think she threw a beer on some lady with a rangers jersey on or something. anyway, hit the beerworks afterwards with nemesis, jb and liz. some good hell week reminiscing.

i'm loving the new howard show. there's been some funny shit on there. bring back takei though!

looks like a week after toronto i'm off to allentown. that should be enthralling. "and it's getting very hard to stayyyyyyyyyyyy"

runaway train

every time i heard "fly by night" by rush, i would always say to myself "there's another song that sounds a lot like this," specifically the main riff. i finally figured it out. it's that song "black gold" by soul asylum. I always thought they were overrated.

on the subject of music, i'm a a flipper. i constantly flip channels when i'm in the car. i think you're either a flipper or you aren't, there's no in between. for people who aren't flippers, riding with a flipper drives them nuts. i guess i have a short attention span when it comes to radio stations. if there's a song on i don't like, i always feel like i'm missing something better on another channel. with sirius, that's bad news. there's like 100 channels. i have a core of about like 20 that i flip through though, so it's not as bad, but bad enough.

well tomorrow morning i get to blow into a computer and have it tell me how fucked my lungs are. that'll be a blast.

i was there last week for a chest xray, and they put a wrist bracelet on me. i was there for like 10 minutes. isn't that a little overkill? i mean, if i dropped dead i had my wallet on me.

is it strange that i'm 28 and this is my my 4th or 5th set of chest xrays and 3rd pulmonary function test? when my lung partially collapsed i went through a few, but still, this is getting rediculous. actually, one time they had to redo them because my lungs didn't fit in the xray the first time. they said i had "long lungs." that's something to put on my resume:

larkoon
123 some street
chestnut hill, ma

objective: to find a job in the field of electrical engineering
skills: dsp, vb, c, hw design, customer support, ADC/DAC, digital functional, long lungs

i wanted to write something more, but i really can't think of it right now, so i won't

you guessed it, even more paris fixation!

ok, i know, "enough!" f it though, i want to post more pics ... these are from my personal collection

classic touristy shot but to this day the best picture i've ever taken

this would be the brothel diddy and i inadvertantly went into. "cash money?"

ah, the shit they can get away with in paris. yes folks, that's bare ass in le metropolitain. we were obsessed with this poster when we were there, it was just so bizzare. my uncle refered to it as "the ass movie". it was some bizzare plot ... i think the dude's gay actually ... just in case you can't quite make that out ...

laissez-faire indeed.

more paris fixation ...

the latin quarter at night. awesome.

gitanes blondes, s'il vous plait?

la fourche or guy moquet?

i have a paris jones right now ... i haven't been since '01 ... not quite sure why i haven't gone since ...

won't you gentleman have a pepsi?

Beam weapons almost ready for battle - Space.com - MSNBC.com

Holy Crap

draw the line

i often wonder what i should actually publish here and what i should keep to myself. i'd say i post maybe 15% of the things that i think about posting. i guess some of it i feel like i don't want to share, some of it i think people won't give a shit about, and some is stuff that's going on that I have to keep on the dl for various reasons.

why do people blog anyway? i mean there are some "news blogs," but most of them are just people rambling about shit. i've written about everything from bush being the antichrist to bean sprouts to feeling old to "WHERE THE HELL IS MY GOD DAMN SIRIUS DOCK!?!?" sorry, still pissing me off. i guess i like to make references that only a few people would get as well, like the picture in this post. to a lot of people, it probably makes no sense, but to a few, they'll say "that's kinda dumb, but interesting."

other droppings:

-congrats L on 1 yr, although i still haven't gotten used to your new last name

-alito's a schmuck

-why does nobody seem to care that monkey george is wiretapping americans?

-we're due for a monster snowstorm

-toronto in february ... toasty

-there's supposedly a "major plot twist" in the first episode of the sopranos this season

-i think bode miller got his ass kicked repeatedly as a kid so he's trying to sound like a badass now, and he sounds like a schmuck. he can ski though ... just maybe not for team usa now. nice work

-i'm utterly unexcited about baseball season. i really was unexcited about last season too. game 5 of the 04 alcs ruined baseball for me i think. i've never go to a game even close to that ever again. the world series seemed anti climatic after that. plus, like I mentioned a month or so ago, "they're shitty."

-i just realized that the first sox game i went to was in '86, and i think it was tom seaver vs jimmy key. holy crap. i think my first "favorite red sox" was ellis burks ... the first go around. i loved that guy. and todd benzinger. now i realize he sucked. one thing i always knew that was that I hated gedman. sorry folks, that was a past ball in game 6, the steamer got a raw deal

-enough of this crap, bed time

balls

i haven't seen my sirius home dock since before dallas. it's driving me nuts.

for those of you who know what this is....

how many of the details do you remember?

not quite teo's, but ...

money

i'm gonna kick you in the nuuuuuuts

kind of how i feel lately. lot of things happening at once. now that my project's been canceled, i'm back to not knowing what the hell i'm going to do each day. right now i'm drawing a floorplan. talk about exciting stuff, let me tell ya. for the record i never even went into the greene building (for those of you who know what that means). now it sounds like one week could be nh, one week burlington vt, one week here, one week poughkeepsie, ny. ballz. more friggin travel. at least i have the sirius in the car now so i'll have stuff to keep me occupied. i also still feel like crap. i still can't really breathe ... now i'm wondering if i have walking pneumonia, and i just don't feel "right" lately, mentally or physically. maybe it's the weather. the friggin sun hasn't been out in like 2 weeks. at least it's the weekend almost.